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fiendishlibrarian
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Real St. Clair bitch-fest in the Star today:
Nightmare on St. Clair
BUMPER BLUES |
As if the chaos weren't bad enough, it now occurs to local residents and commuters that moving along and across this major east-west artery will never be the same again. Are the changes are cutting Toronto in two?
Oct. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM
LESLIE SCRIVENER
Dr. Bruno Vendittelli, a Forest Hill orthodontist, was fed up with the delays on St. Clair Ave. W., where the middle of the road has been torn up to build a streetcar right-of-way.
With one lane open in each direction and bumper-to-bumper traffic, patients were arriving at his office on the strip half an hour late, throwing schedules into disarray.
To remedy this, Vendittelli, who rides to work on his Vespa, has hired a valet service to park patients' cars. It's expensive, he says, declining to reveal just how expensive. But it is working and will continue for the duration of the construction.
Traffic troubles in midtown have residents in an uproar as traffic streams onto the tranquil side streets and drivers endure commutes that have doubled and sometimes tripled.
Just how bad is it?
"It's impossible," says Debra Zucker, who lives near Eglinton and Spadina. "We feel trapped."
Because of the construction, there are few places to cross St. Clair, a major east-west artery. The north-south streets are affected even more, with long, long line-ups of traffic down Russell Hill Rd., Spadina Rd. and Bathurst St.
Some of these inconveniences will be permanent, which has come as a surprise to many residents. Since the transit right-of-way will be six inches high, drivers won't be able to make left turns on or off St. Clair between traffic lights, says Jacqueline White, the city's manager of traffic operations. But left turns and U-turns at intersections with lights are allowed.
"People didn't put two and two together," says Zucker. "When I talk to people in our neighbourhood, they're flabbergasted when they realize this is permanent.
Holy shit, where the **** have these people been the past three years? How many of the countless meetings, notices, flyers, etc did you *not* bother reading?
"What they've done is cut the city in half, and I can only imagine what will happen with the first big snowstorm."
This is what Margaret Smith and others in the citizens' group that fought the right of way have been arguing for years. "We said it was going to happen, and this is a preview of what the St. Clair streetcar will be like," says Smith of Save Our St. Clair (SOS), which in March abandoned its legal challenge to stop the right-of-way.
Now SOS is taking a political tack — endorsing candidates in November's municipal election who support the campaign. "We hope a new council will review the decision and stop the project at Bathurst."
Is this woman on crack? It would cost more to cancel contracts and alter plans (the track and roadbed *still* need to be done) than to go ahead with the original plan.
Commuters and people in neighbourhoods on either side of St. Clair will have to redraw their navigational maps for this part of the city. One popular northbound route is no longer an option: drivers going north on Poplar Plains Rd. used to be able to make a quick right-hand jog on St. Clair before turning left onto Forest Hill Rd.
Cry me a river. So you're in the Land Rover for a few extra blocks. Big effin' deal.
All sorts of routines are being disrupted. Recently, Zucker set off for a 10 a.m. appointment near Summerhill Ave., usually an eight-minute trip. It took her 45 minutes. She says she's reluctant to let her 17-year-old daughter, a new driver, take the family car in the evening because of the confusion. Grocery shopping is curtailed. "I can't go to Loblaws on St. Clair. Forget it."
Horrors! As we all know, there are *no* other grocery shops that stock that specific brand of brie I like for *miles*!
Forest Hill residents are also troubled by the way commuters are using their quiet streets to bypass the construction.
One Saturday morning, lawyer Scott Fenton's children, 9 and 11, were playing outside their house on Lynwood, a small street south of St. Clair, but he pulled them back indoors because traffic was so heavy.
Because of the dense spillover traffic on Lonsdale, parents dropping their daughters at Bishop Strachan School found they couldn't get in or out of the school's circular driveway and sat idling for 10 minutes.
More terror! The little princesses may actually have to walk to school! Or, *shudder*, take the bus!
Susan Ainley, president of the North Hill District Homeowners Association, sat in traffic for half an hour trying to get to a school meeting in Rosedale. "It's beyond belief," she says. "I gave up, came home and sent my regrets."
Ainley worries about increased road rage among commuters. One resident saw the driver of a Mercedes try to pass on the narrow lanes on St. Clair, ending up with his wheel lodged in a hole.
Once again, wealth does not equate with intelligence. Thus the whole project should be scuppered, of course. Can't have beached Benzes cluttering the 'hood, now can we?
"They get mad, they're frustrated by the length of their journey and since they don't live here, they have an anonymity."
Ainley says she supports transit improvement, but was surprised to learn that Toronto Transit Commission studies show trip times will not be reduced by the dedicated streetcar track. "We'd want to think that given the level of disruption — extraordinary disruption — it's for a good reason."
Mitch Stambler, manager of service planning for the TTC, says the point was never to reduce travel time. "The object is to improve the reliability of service."
Projections show that when the work's finished, a streetcar user on the new elevated track will save only five minutes on a round trip between Yonge St. and Keele St.
"You will not ride the streetcar and feel the G-forces," says Stambler. "But if we said it will take 13 minutes to get you somewhere, by God, we'll get you there."
In addition to the roadbed being torn up, sidewalks are being rebuilt, and customers have to walk a plank to get into stores — a situation that will prevail in varying locations on the Yonge-to-Vaughan-Rd. section of St. Clair until December. Construction will continue moving westward to Keele St. and is expected to be complete in 2008.
Not surprisingly, businesses are suffering.
The manager of the Open Window Bakery at St. Clair and Raglan Ave. put a sign in the window saying bread, bagels and buns are half price during construction.
Sales plunged by half in August, when the work started. Now they're about one-third less than what they were at the beginning of the year.
For anyone feeling less than sympathetic toward the wealthy residents of Forest Hill, a local professional who takes the subway to work says this: "They have to get to work, too. These guys pay a lot of taxes and they can't get down to Bay St. to make the big bucks."
Right. I see. So thousands upon thousands of people manage to get by on the subway, but because these bigwigs can't stream down Avenue Road in their Porsches at 90 km/h, the foundations of our economic system will crumble? Uh huh.....
Nightmare on St. Clair
BUMPER BLUES |
As if the chaos weren't bad enough, it now occurs to local residents and commuters that moving along and across this major east-west artery will never be the same again. Are the changes are cutting Toronto in two?
Oct. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM
LESLIE SCRIVENER
Dr. Bruno Vendittelli, a Forest Hill orthodontist, was fed up with the delays on St. Clair Ave. W., where the middle of the road has been torn up to build a streetcar right-of-way.
With one lane open in each direction and bumper-to-bumper traffic, patients were arriving at his office on the strip half an hour late, throwing schedules into disarray.
To remedy this, Vendittelli, who rides to work on his Vespa, has hired a valet service to park patients' cars. It's expensive, he says, declining to reveal just how expensive. But it is working and will continue for the duration of the construction.
Traffic troubles in midtown have residents in an uproar as traffic streams onto the tranquil side streets and drivers endure commutes that have doubled and sometimes tripled.
Just how bad is it?
"It's impossible," says Debra Zucker, who lives near Eglinton and Spadina. "We feel trapped."
Because of the construction, there are few places to cross St. Clair, a major east-west artery. The north-south streets are affected even more, with long, long line-ups of traffic down Russell Hill Rd., Spadina Rd. and Bathurst St.
Some of these inconveniences will be permanent, which has come as a surprise to many residents. Since the transit right-of-way will be six inches high, drivers won't be able to make left turns on or off St. Clair between traffic lights, says Jacqueline White, the city's manager of traffic operations. But left turns and U-turns at intersections with lights are allowed.
"People didn't put two and two together," says Zucker. "When I talk to people in our neighbourhood, they're flabbergasted when they realize this is permanent.
Holy shit, where the **** have these people been the past three years? How many of the countless meetings, notices, flyers, etc did you *not* bother reading?
"What they've done is cut the city in half, and I can only imagine what will happen with the first big snowstorm."
This is what Margaret Smith and others in the citizens' group that fought the right of way have been arguing for years. "We said it was going to happen, and this is a preview of what the St. Clair streetcar will be like," says Smith of Save Our St. Clair (SOS), which in March abandoned its legal challenge to stop the right-of-way.
Now SOS is taking a political tack — endorsing candidates in November's municipal election who support the campaign. "We hope a new council will review the decision and stop the project at Bathurst."
Is this woman on crack? It would cost more to cancel contracts and alter plans (the track and roadbed *still* need to be done) than to go ahead with the original plan.
Commuters and people in neighbourhoods on either side of St. Clair will have to redraw their navigational maps for this part of the city. One popular northbound route is no longer an option: drivers going north on Poplar Plains Rd. used to be able to make a quick right-hand jog on St. Clair before turning left onto Forest Hill Rd.
Cry me a river. So you're in the Land Rover for a few extra blocks. Big effin' deal.
All sorts of routines are being disrupted. Recently, Zucker set off for a 10 a.m. appointment near Summerhill Ave., usually an eight-minute trip. It took her 45 minutes. She says she's reluctant to let her 17-year-old daughter, a new driver, take the family car in the evening because of the confusion. Grocery shopping is curtailed. "I can't go to Loblaws on St. Clair. Forget it."
Horrors! As we all know, there are *no* other grocery shops that stock that specific brand of brie I like for *miles*!
Forest Hill residents are also troubled by the way commuters are using their quiet streets to bypass the construction.
One Saturday morning, lawyer Scott Fenton's children, 9 and 11, were playing outside their house on Lynwood, a small street south of St. Clair, but he pulled them back indoors because traffic was so heavy.
Because of the dense spillover traffic on Lonsdale, parents dropping their daughters at Bishop Strachan School found they couldn't get in or out of the school's circular driveway and sat idling for 10 minutes.
More terror! The little princesses may actually have to walk to school! Or, *shudder*, take the bus!
Susan Ainley, president of the North Hill District Homeowners Association, sat in traffic for half an hour trying to get to a school meeting in Rosedale. "It's beyond belief," she says. "I gave up, came home and sent my regrets."
Ainley worries about increased road rage among commuters. One resident saw the driver of a Mercedes try to pass on the narrow lanes on St. Clair, ending up with his wheel lodged in a hole.
Once again, wealth does not equate with intelligence. Thus the whole project should be scuppered, of course. Can't have beached Benzes cluttering the 'hood, now can we?
"They get mad, they're frustrated by the length of their journey and since they don't live here, they have an anonymity."
Ainley says she supports transit improvement, but was surprised to learn that Toronto Transit Commission studies show trip times will not be reduced by the dedicated streetcar track. "We'd want to think that given the level of disruption — extraordinary disruption — it's for a good reason."
Mitch Stambler, manager of service planning for the TTC, says the point was never to reduce travel time. "The object is to improve the reliability of service."
Projections show that when the work's finished, a streetcar user on the new elevated track will save only five minutes on a round trip between Yonge St. and Keele St.
"You will not ride the streetcar and feel the G-forces," says Stambler. "But if we said it will take 13 minutes to get you somewhere, by God, we'll get you there."
In addition to the roadbed being torn up, sidewalks are being rebuilt, and customers have to walk a plank to get into stores — a situation that will prevail in varying locations on the Yonge-to-Vaughan-Rd. section of St. Clair until December. Construction will continue moving westward to Keele St. and is expected to be complete in 2008.
Not surprisingly, businesses are suffering.
The manager of the Open Window Bakery at St. Clair and Raglan Ave. put a sign in the window saying bread, bagels and buns are half price during construction.
Sales plunged by half in August, when the work started. Now they're about one-third less than what they were at the beginning of the year.
For anyone feeling less than sympathetic toward the wealthy residents of Forest Hill, a local professional who takes the subway to work says this: "They have to get to work, too. These guys pay a lot of taxes and they can't get down to Bay St. to make the big bucks."
Right. I see. So thousands upon thousands of people manage to get by on the subway, but because these bigwigs can't stream down Avenue Road in their Porsches at 90 km/h, the foundations of our economic system will crumble? Uh huh.....